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Replies to post #646 on Charlotte's Web Holdings Inc (CWBHF)
10/13/18 12:21 PM
A brief explanation and history of CBD
CBD reacts differently with the endocannabinoid system—the system in the brain and nervous system that manages pain-sensation, memory, mood and more—than it’s cousin THC. Whereas THC binds directly to the system’s cannabinoid receptors to stimulate things like dopamine production, CBD reacts indirectly with the receptors and increases the body’s production of naturally-produced endocannabinoids.
With the sudden rush of attention around CBD in recent years, one could be forgiven for thinking that it’s a new discovery. In reality, CBD was first isolated from the cannabis plant all the way back in 1940. However, it would be a long time before we came to understand its potential. As with any medicinal drug, and particularly with one associated with cannabis, the road to understanding and legitimacy has been long and slow for CBD.
Dr. Roger Adams and a team of chemists at the university of Illinois were the first to discover the compound, though based on the paper that the team published in 1940, it’s clear that Adams and his team had no idea what they had discovered. The paper described CBD as “very toxic,” something we now know to be far from the truth.
It would take until 1963 for researchers to take another serious look at CBD when Dr. Raphael Mechoulam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem determined the compound’s exact structure, opening CBD up for research as a pharmacological substance. In 1973, the first suggestions of CBD’s therapeutic potential were made when Brazilian researchers found reductions of the symptoms of epilepsy in animals. Further studies over the following two decades yielded promising results, showing a diminishment of convulsions in epilepsy patients, and promise for treating psychosis and anxiety. The discovery of the endocannabinoid system in 1988 shed light on how cannabinoids naturally work with the human body and further increased interest in cannabinoids as therapeutic medicine.
This research continued into the 21st century but it would be the plight of a little girl in Colorado that would bring the compound to mainstream attention. The high CBD/low THC cannabis strain Charlotte’s Web was developed in 2011 and named for Charlotte Figi, a then five-year-old girl with Dravet Syndrome, who was suffering from up to 300 grand mal seizures each week. As numerous other medications and therapies failed to help and Charlotte’s quality of life rapidly declined, her parents turned to CBD, a treatment that was unheard of for children at the time and extremely controversial. To the astonishment of Charlotte’s parents and physicians, the hail mary treatment did in fact reduce her seizures, completely.
Charlotte’s story attracted serious media attention from outlets all over the world, bringing attention and education on medicinal CBD to the public. Since then, the market for CBD products has exploded. CBD is now commonly used for serious disorders like Charlotte’s, for chronic pain and ailments, and as a general health and wellness product.
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